Posts Tagged ‘news’

I don’t have the time or patience to write a new article today or for the past week, so here are a couple links you can read with decent info about recent medical advances that might help keep you healthier. These new gadgets range from stem cells that can rebuild damaged heart tissue, to intestinal liners that restrict the absorption of excess calories, to bacteria that will keep you from ever getting tooth decay. As you read this great news, just imagine the kinds of devices and genetic tools we’ll have in just 10 more years.

Also, I’m sorry I haven’t been answering questions lately or posting any good new content. As always I have many great plans in the works, but life is just taking precedence over maintaining a blog right now. Hoping to get back at it full time really soon.

I want to tell you about a pretty cool new website today. If you’ve been hanging around the health and fitness website industry for a while now, you might remember HealthRanker, a health news social voting site, where popular articles are voted to prominence and end up on page 1. Well, HealthRanker was bought and destroyed a year or so ago, my attempts to make a clone called FitWire failed miserable, and now there is a new player on the scene.

Today’s post can be filed away in the there-is-hope-for-humanity category.

A 17 year old high school student named Ike Ditzenberger has down syndrome. He also plays on the varsity football team.

In late September, the Lake Stevens Vikings were crushing the Snohomish Panthers 35-0 with 10 seconds left in the game. That’s when the Panthers ran their top secret play, The Ike Special.

Ike took the hand off from the Panthers quarterback and proceeded to run 51 yards for a touchdown as the clock expired. Vikings players definitely took the end of that play off, but in this case it mattered way more to everyone on that field for little Ike to score 6 points, than to tackle the poor guy to salvage a shutout.

The Vikings ended up winning 35-6 and now have a 4-0 record in 2010, but Ike Ditzenberger and his family have a memory they will treasure for the rest of their lives.

And in Pro Football News…

If Ike’s story doesn’t make you feel warm and fuzzy, then I’ll leave you with this:

72 million adults are considered obese (defined by the BMI being over 30)

84.8 million adults have no leisure-time physical activity

total obesity-related health care costs are estimated at $147 billion

Those are some frustrating numbers.

Given those ridiculous health care costs, and all the other money that you have to shell out food, clothing, fad weight loss gimmicks, etc… just how much does it cost annually for the average person to be obese?

A recent study conducted by George Washington University researchers found that the annual cost of being overweight is $8,365 for men and $6,518 for women with an obesity-related shortened life span factored in.

In a disgusting development, the Corn Refiners Association plans to ask the FDA to allow high-fructose corn syrup to be called simple “corn sugar”. Check it out at LiveScience.

They plan to claim that corn sugar is no different from cane sugar, and that fact means corn sugar is not that bad for you.

What?!

Since when has cane sugar been considered “not that bad for you”? It is linked directly to the onset of Type II Diabetes, for crying out loud!

Regarding the claim that corn sugar is the same as cane sugar, an attempt to butcher the concept that cane sugar is “all-natural”, let me show you a quote from someone who knows exactly how high fructose corn syrup is made (in the lab):

Low carbohydrate diets are effective for losing fat. The low-carb approach is more effective than the low-fat or low-calorie approach to dieting, when trying to lose fat.

However, the question we’ve been asking for the last 20 years, or since the birth of Atkins, is – which foods are the healthiest protein sources on a low-carb diet?

Some choices include eggs, chicken, bacon, sausage, beef, salmon, white fish, shellfish, ham, pork, nuts, beans, and tofu. Since tofu is nasty, and can lead to increased risk of cancer and elevated estrogen levels in men, we won’t discuss it. But what about red meat and other meats that are high in saturated fat?

Fish Oil Helps Prevent Psychosis

A study of potential schizophrenics has determined that supplementing with fish oil, primarily long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, can reduce the risk of ever developing full-blown schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder. In fact, supplementing with fish oil was found to be equally effective at preventing psychotic episodes as anti-psychotic medications.

The study was conducted with 81 patients at ultra-high risk of developing a psychotic disorder. At the end of the study, less than 5% of patients supplementing with fish oil developed full-blown psychosis, while nearly 28% of patients in the placebo group transitioned to a psychotic state.

This is great news for adolescents, since that age group is highly affected by the weight gain side effects of anti-psychotic medication. Supplementing daily with fish oil sounds like a great idea to me.

Looks like I haven’t posted in about a week now. That would be because:

I’ve been having great fun camping at White Lake State Park in Tamworth, NH.

My wireless Internet connection stinks so I’ve brought home the development PC sitting in the office that I never use anymore, so that I can hardwire it to the router.

Now that I am back online and back from camping, I anticipate posting again regularly until July 4th, when I will again go camping at White Lake State Park.

Upcoming Project Swole projects:

A 5×5 Minimal Effort Powerlifting routine based on some studies of old school training, Tony Robbins, and Pavel Tsatsouline. A spreadsheet will accompany the routine so you can plug in your numbers and print out your training log if you wish.

A 5×5 Speed-Strength Full Body routine, for those who feel limited by the 5×5 minimal effort powerlifting routine. The spreadsheet for this guy already exists, but I’m not offering it for download yet.

I still want to get out my Project Shred idea, but I haven’t had time to build it out the way I want. It will be a hardcore diet with meal equivalents that you can use to make up your own diet plan.

My fitness themed HealthRanker.com clone FitWire is live, but it doesn’t work the way I want and is not setup the way I want, so I am not ready to launch it yet. You can find it if you search for it, but I’m not ready to link to it or promote it yet.

Hopefully that stuff will be done soon. For now, just continue to lift and get Swole.

After a 25 year increase, it seems that the percentage of obese or overweight children has plateaued. This news offers us some hope that perhaps the future of America will not be riddled with diabetes and heart disease.

One expert, Dr. David Ludwig, has commented that even though he is encouraged by these findings, “it is still too soon to know if this really means we’re beginning to make meaningful inroads into this epidemic. It may simply be a statistical fluke.” Another expert maintains that there is at least a small level of optimism about these results.